Algae have useful industrial purposes, such as for use as a biofuel crop or for waste water treatment. In particular, algae have the potential to provide a renewable supply for liquid fuels. Recent work for algae biofuel development has primarily focused on production of high lipid algae; however, this goal has not been achieved in high productivity within outdoor cultures. Furthermore, processing of algal biomass can be energy-intensive, which in turn can lead to an expensive industrial process flow in order to obtain pure, low nitrogen bio-oils. Accordingly, there is a need for new systems and methods that provide low cost, high efficiency production of biofuels from algal biomass sources.